46 percent of the opinion leaders believe that Africa has progressed in the past five years

The result of Africa Leads, the first barometer of the French Investors Council in Africa, was revealed at the recently held Africa Forum 2019 organized by the MOCI and the Council of French Investors in Africa (CIAN).

Conducted by IMMAR Institute, a specialist in media and marketing studies in sub-Saharan Africa and North Africa, the Africa Leads survey is the first to specifically target opinion leaders in all their diversity. It was conducted among a sample of 1,244 leaders in eight French-speaking African countries including Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Senegal, Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso, Cameroon and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The survey in question was mainly focused on three things- the vision of Africa and its future, non-African foreign countries’ perception about the continent, companies and the most popular brands.

As per the survey results, Germany, China, the United States, and Japan are the four non-African countries with the best image among African opinion leaders, reported Le Point Afrique. Around 49 percent of the respondents chose South Africa, 36 percent chose Morocco, 28 percent and 27 percent chose Ghana and Rwanda as African champions respectively.

In the survey, 46 percent of the opinion leaders believe that Africa has progressed in the past five years, and 56 percent are optimistic about their five-year future. The most optimistic are Moroccans, both for the overall situation of the continent (70 percent) than for the situation in their own country (62 percent). Digital is cited by 73 percent of respondents as the area where the most drastic progress has been made in the last five years.

Notably, four of the ten companies and the most popular brands of African opinion leaders are French. Cited by 41percent of respondents, Orange topped in the telecoms sector, while Air France, cited by 22 percent of respondents), topped in the airline sector.